Student Games

One of our favourite parts of the day is hearing from you folks, and there’s a ton of places that can happen – email, Udemy DMs, Facebook, Twitter, the forum, reviews etc. A few weeks back we got the following awesome message of thanks… I just wanted to say thank you for the Unity (and Unreal.. and Blender!) courses you’ve made – since taking your original Unity course, I’ve become a freelance/indie game developer – I’ve released one game and am working on another (unannounced) project for the same company. I’m also about to release my third Udemy course! Your course helped me switch from being a (junior) software developer to working in the games industry with enough knowledge to share with others – so thank you! Jenny Delighted, and intrigued to hear more, we reached out to Jenny. Below she shares her GameDev.tv journey. What’s your background? I used to be a theoretical physicist (in quantum information) and did not particularly enjoy programming! After leaving physics, I decided to look into coding again – its logic appealed to me – and this time found I really liked it. Growing up, I always wanted to be an astronaut or physicist; […]

Ever wondered how to get your game to rank? Complete Unity Developer student, Rafael, shares his experience of taking his first game from nowhere to third in the Google Play store listing (for the term “ragdoll physics”). Rafael’s Story My name is Rafael Rivera, I’m a 38 year old advertisement bachelor from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and I’m an Indie Game developer. Since I can remember, I was always playing video games. I’m the type of gamer that enjoys every kind of game – from 8-bits to flash games, mobile, Xbox or PC. If it’s fun then I will play it! I always wanted to work with games, but it was not an easy option back then… before the internet. Yeah, I’m from that time. Since I decided to start my Gamedev journey with Unity, about eight months ago, I searched online for courses and found Udemy. I clicked on their ‘best-rated Unity courses’ and found “Complete Unity Developer – Learn To Code By Making Games” with instructor Ben Tristem and team. I learnt everything I needed for my first game: animations, level managers, buttons, sounds, physics, coding in C# and more. Ben Tristem is a great teacher. The course made […]

Always brightens our day to see what you folks create while taking our courses. Today we’re sharing Lukas’s story, about working as part of an aspiring indie GameDev start-up in South America and releasing their first game. What’s your background? My name is Lukas, I’m a System Engineer and Mathematician and I’m the programmer in the MIKRO team. MIKRO is a nascent indie GameDev company in Colombia, South America. As well as myself, there’s Javier (our 3D modeller) and we have some other people who take part, depending on the size of each game. How did you end up on a Udemy course? My experience as programmer is good, so I decided to make games in Unity and C#. I knew the engine from the first versions, but hadn’t used it for a couple of years. To get quickly up to speed, I decided to take some courses and looking on the internet I found GameDev.TV on Udemy. In MIKRO we started with a game called Super – Gravity Switch Battle, which we wanted to be the opening chapter for a possible sequel. This first adventure is a basic platform where our little potbellied hero jumps, changes gravity and takes powers to […]

Want to be a better game designer? Want to create more interesting games? If so, then lets discuss the Single-Attribute-Exploration-And-Expansion Technique… or, worded slightly less crappily, “Edgecraft” (as coined by marketing guru Seth Godin). What is Edgecraft? Edgecraft is the process identifying one attribute or quality of a thing (eg. your game) and exaggerating that quality until it is something new / fresh / amazing / WTF-ish. The idea is to push beyond “sensible” and find something that really stands out. Let’s apply that to your game. First, lets consider Exhibit A, a screenshot from the Unity RPG Course that Ben Tristem and I have been working on. The game has the core building blocks of most RPGs – a Player Character that you control, enemies, combat, User Interface, hit points, storyline, and so on. The magic of using Edgecraft is to take each aspect, one at a time, and ask yourself, “how could I make this different, or unusual, or crazy?”. You can do this systematically by picking one aspect, then brainstorming on that topic. For example, consider Exhibit B… Arrow #1 is pointing at the player. Let’s dig into the player a bit. Step 1 – Brainstorming attributes […]

Game ideas can come from the strangest of places! Here, Unity student Pontus, shares his game dev journey to finally finishing a game… What’s your background? I work for ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) as a VFX artist, an exciting job which has allowed me to work on some great films. So why would I make something as silly as Flappy Fart? Well, I remember picking up a software around the age of 10 I believe, called The Games Factory, where you could put together very simple 2D games. The idea that I could make something that others could then play was a thrilling thought! I started making games like a mad person, I had so many projects going on I lost count, I loved it! And I finished zero projects… And as the years went by I started forgetting about the video game making dreams and decided to pursue a career in film instead, I had some basic understanding of editing and 3D softwares, it seemed like the right thing to do. Besides, the idea of programming in games was always daunting. It was only one day at work, years later, when a friend of mine mentioned an online […]

It’s awesome to see our students taking what they’ve learnt on our courses and using it to help other people learn. In this post we’re sharing John Gale’s story of how he came to create ‘Hiragana Breaker’ – a block-breaking game that helps you learn basic Japanese characters. What’s your background? My major in university was for audio recording with a minor in music. I have a Master’s degree in Japanese, a Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) Level 1 certification, and lived in Japan as an English teacher for almost four year. All of that was because of Japanese video games like Final Fantasy and Mega Man on the original NES. So yes, I have been into video games since I was a child. But growing up in the 80’s and 90’s before the Internet and YouTube were everywhere, I never made the connection that computer programming or designing games was something I could learn to do. It seemed so distant and disconnected from anything I was studying or pursuing as a career. Looking back now though, it’s something I could have done, been good at and had a successful career with. But thanks to the course I realize it’s […]

I recently had an opportunity to showcase my game Colonial Sea Trader at the IGDA-DC District Arcade. I learned a lot from that, and want to pass on some tips to you to help you in similar events. The first question is, how can you find places to show off your game? There are a lot of opportunities out there, if you keep your eyes opened. I learned about the District Arcade from the IGDA-DC Meetup Page. Look for game developer, indie game developer, or other such meetups for your area. You can also check Facebook for related groups. Find one, find out the cost and submission requirements, ensure you can in fact support the event, and register! I suggest looking for something for your first showing that is at most a part of a day, between 2-5 hours is probably good, although it depends somewhat on the type of game you have. I was informed about a month before that I was in, and was going to be able to present my game. I was excited, but then I started thinking, I wasn’t ready. Colonial Sea Trader at that time could only be played for maybe a minute before […]

A definite highlight for us is when you folks share your creations with us! In this post Unity student and Co-Founder of Ghost Street Games, Dante Campana, walks us through his game development journey. What’s your background? I began dipping my toes into game development at roughly the age of 12. The first time I found the Warcraft III Map Editor program, I stayed up all night making my first tower defense game to play with my friends on Battle.Net. By the time I was in high school, when I wasn’t playing Rockband or Crackdown, I found myself editing sprites for a small development team that, unfortunately, never released anything to the public. I put game development to the side for a period of time until I went to school for audio engineering which shifted my focus back towards game development and, more specifically, sound design and integration. I spent my first year out of school as a contractor for a AAA game studio in the quality assurance department and the moment my contract ended I knew my next task had to be picking up Unity. How did you end up on a Udemy course? Having just finished a stint […]

For a while now, I’ve considered streaming game development online. I have seen others do it, and I figured, why not give it a shot? I decided this week to take the plunge and finally do it, and I found it a rewarding experience. The first question is, should you stream your product? The answer is probably yes, although there are quite a few things you might not want to stream. One thing that I have long considered streaming is Ludum Dare, but there is more than just that which is worth streaming. Ludum Dare works well because you have to release the source code, but I decided to take a stab at it with the project I’ve been working on for close to two years, Colonial Sea Trader. I decided, what’s the worst that can happen? The next question that came to mind is, where should I stream? Bottom line, there were two options I decided, either YouTube or Twitch. I ended up going with Twitch, although I might try a YouTube approach at a future time. I created a twitch channel for Old Ham Media, my game company. I did a test broadcast using my second monitor as […]

Working on community support, a question that comes up a lot is ‘can I create a game after taking your course?’. The short answer is YES, yes you can! We regularly hear from students who have gone to release commercial games after taking our courses. We love it when you share your achievements with us. Whether it’s making your childhood dream of creating games come true, landing that game dev job you’ve been hankering after or publishing your first game on Google Play. In this post, we hear from a student who’s done the latter. Jonathan Holowka talks to us about his journey to releasing Jungle Jumpers. 1) What’s your background? I graduated from Ryerson University in Toronto back in 2010 with a degree in business and a major in human resources. After falling prey to the “no work, no experience – no experience, no work” trap, I ended up working for the family business doing marketing and sales (which is where I still am today). I learned a considerable amount about marketing but still knew nothing in regards to programming. While many of my interests have wavered over the course of my life, gaming has always been the one constant. My […]